30 Amazing Studio Photos of People Wearing the Same Clothes for a Photoshoot From the 19th Century

The early photography studio was much more than a place to have one’s portrait made—it was an entire occasion. Studio proprietors and entrepreneurs deployed a range of strategies to elevate the photograph to the status of fine art.

Coaxing out dignified expressions, arranging backdrops and accessories, managing the distribution of light, and correctly timing an exposure were all skills that made early photography equal parts art and science.

In the early days of the daguerreotype, two main types of practitioners emerged: those who established permanent studios and galleries in city centers, and itinerant photographers who brought the technology to small towns and rural areas. The latter were often portrait painters or miniaturists who adapted their craft to the photographic apparatus, charging as little as 25 cents for a likeness.

By contrast, daguerreotypists who opened permanent establishments billed themselves as professional artists. Studios advertised their services in clever designs printed on the backs of cartes de visite and cabinet cards.

Below is a collection of 30 amazing studio photos of people wearing the same clothes for a photoshoot from the early 19th century:

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40 Vintage Cartes de Visite That Show Portraits of Men During American Civil War

The carte de visite, or visiting card, a photographic format about the size of a modern baseball card, dominated the American scene coincident with the Civil War. Invented in France and imported to the United States via Great Britain about 1860, it immediately became all the rage in big cities and small towns across the country.

Portraits of men during American Civil War

In 1863, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes declared, “Card portraits, as everybody knows, have become the social currency, the ‘green-backs’ of civilization.” Cartes began a gradual decline in popularity in 1866 after the introduction of the larger cabinet card format. The card photograph continued in production as late as 1920.

Here below is a set of vintage cartes de visite from Ronald S. Coddington that shows portraits of men during American Civil War.

A bearded man stands before the camera operator wearing the embroidered accouterments that signal his membership in the Masons

A clean-shaven young man wearing a white collarless shirt, vest, striped checked pants and coat sits with a stick and top hat

A gentleman poses with his pipe and a humidor

A gentleman sits sideways on a chair, gazing off camera with hand to cheek in what appears to be a contemplative, thoughtful frame of mind

A Maine gentleman strikes a casual pose with frock coat, top hat and cane

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40 Amazing Outdoor Photos Show What Life Looked Like in Victorian Era

Most of the earliest photographs were not printed on paper, but on sheets of metal or glass. While the images themselves are beautiful, the photographic processes used to create the images are equally fascinating.

Daguerreotypes are often considered the first practical form of photography. The process was invented by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre in 1839, and the richness and detail of the images surpasses even those of modern photographic techniques.

Ambrotypes are often confused with daguerreotypes Glass plate ambrotype because they are housed in the same type of case. The ambrotypes were placed in ornate box cases to protect the fragile glass plates. This type of photography was very popular and widely available from the 1850s through the 1880s, largely because ambrotypes were cheaper to produce than daguerreotypes. Ambrotypes, like daguerreotypes, could be hand painted with color or gold to make the photo more appealing.

Tintypes used the same wet collodion process ambrotypes did, but the process was applying thin sheets of iron coated in black or dark brown paint instead of glass. The process was developed in 1856 and was extremely popular in the United States as tintypes were cheap, thin, and more durable than ambrotypes or daguerrotypes. Some tintypes were placed in decorative box cases, but the majority were placed in paper frames or left loose, which made the photos easy to send in the mail. Tintypes were especially popular among Civil War soldiers and their families. Many photographers set up shop in military camps.

Paper photography ultimately triumphed over metal and glass techniques, largely because they were easier to use and cheaper to produce. Photo paper coated with albumen, collodion, or gelatin allowed for increasing detail to be captured in a shorter amount of time.

Take a look at these amazing outdoor photos to see what life looked like in Victorian era.

Portrait of a family, circa late 1850s

Daguerreotype of an outdoor group, circa 1850s

Portrait of a couple outside their house, circa 1950s

Ambrotype of a group assembled in front of a house with a stone slab in the foreground, circa 1857

Mother and children outside home, circa 1858

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30 Amazing Thanksgiving Menus of US Hotels From the Late 19th Century

These days, the typical American Thanksgiving menu is pretty standardized: turkey, stuffing, potatoes, pie. Back in the late 19th century, when the holiday’s status as a national observance was still relatively new, those dishes were already being consumed but holiday menus of the time could show a little variety. For example, on Nov. 30, 1899, at the Plaza Hotel, you could get turkey stuffed with chestnuts for $0.75—or sweetbreads, cooked “Parisienne” style, for a dollar.

That Plaza menu is just one of many historical bills of fare that have been digitized by the New York Public Library’s “What’s on the Menu?” project. The Library has 45,000 menus dating as far back as the 1840s. Below is a selection of 30 amazing vintage Thanksgiving menus from the late 19th century (click on each image to view it larger):

Hotel Duquesne, 1889

Hotel Normandie, 1889

Murray Hill Hotel, 1891

Occidental Hotel, 1891

The Portland, 1891

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32 Amazing Vintage Photos of Egyptians From the 1870s

These early photographs were taken by Émile Béchard in Cairo, Egypt during the 1870s. Portraits include ‘types’ such as shopkeepers, street merchants and dancers.

Béchard was active in Cairo from 1869 until 1880 where he specialized in photographing Egyptian subjects in an orientalist style. The name H. Bechard appears scratched into the negatives of a number of large format prints produced in Egypt in the 1870s.

Émile Béchard operated a studio during the same period in the Esbekiah Gardens in Cairo along with Hippolyte Delie and who won a gold medal at the International Exhibition of 1878 in Paris. It is believed that Delie was an alternate name used by Emile’s brother Hippolyte.

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Amazing Vintage Photos of Tandem Cycling Sport Taken by Jules Beau From the 19th Century

Before the First World War, sport was a multi-facetted social phenomenon in Paris. On the one hand, the first sports federations were created and started organizing regulated competitions. On the other, sport was at the crossroads of public performance, technological development and bourgeois sociability typical of the end of the nineteenth century. These amazing photographs were taken by Frenchman Jules Beau from between 1896 and 1897.

Jules Beau is considered the first photographer to specialize in shooting sports and distributing the work to the press. He was a photographer of “the people’s sports” and was particularly attracted to the new Parisian craze of “velocipede,” which soon became a competitive sport. His albums are filled with men and women posed on their bicycles much like these photographs:

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Vintage Studio Photos of Victorian Babies With Their Half-Face Hidden Mothers

Have you ever had difficulties trying to get a baby to sit down and pose for a picture? It’s a massive headache now, but it was even harder for mothers in the Victorian era when vintage photography technology made posing very difficult.

To understand these photographs, you first need to understand the technical realities of early photography. Unlike the quick snap of picture-taking today, the subject of a portrait in the 19th century needed to sit still for a lot longer. If you wanted a daguerrotype of your baby, you needed to keep the sucker still for between 60 and 90 seconds.

Because of this, mothers were frequently enlisted to keep their children still during the shot. But instead of posing with the children, mothers instead opted to obscure themselves, resulting in photographs in which a mother is holding a child while completely covered in a brocade.

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The Rudge Coventry Rotary Tricycle From the Late 19th Century

Social, but reserved for the wealthy: even elaborate bicycles like these Starley trikes were expensive. This chassis was used for the world’s first electric vehicle, Gustave Trouvé’s electric Starley tricycle of 1881.

The men and companies involved with the Coventry Rotary tricycle were some of the leading pioneers of bicycle invention and production.

James Starley – considered the “father of the bicycle.” He left Coventry Machinists Co in 1870 and, with William Hillman set up their own business. In 1876 James Starley patented the ‘Coventry Lever’ Tricycle as depicted on the Starley Memorial in Coventry. The ‘lever’ tricycle had evolved from Starley’s first lady’s bicycle, a lever-driven “ordinary” with wheels out of track.

Haynes & Jefferis were two former foremen of James Starley at Smith Starley & Co. and they took up the license from 1875 to produce James Starley’s bicycles. The ‘Coventry Tricycle’ was patented in 1876 and produced from 1877, including production under license by Haynes & Jefferis.

In 1880 Trouvé improved the efficiency of a small electric motor developed by Siemens and using the recently developed rechargeable battery, fitted it to an English James Starley tricycle, inventing the world’s first electric vehicle.

Although this was successfully tested on April 19, 1881 along the Rue Valois in central Paris, he was unable to patent it. Trouvé swiftly adapted his battery-powered motor to marine propulsion; to make it easy to carry his marine conversion to and from his workshop to the nearby River Seine, Trouvé made it portable and removable from the boat, thus inventing the outboard engine. On May 26, 1881 the 5m Trouvé prototype, called Le Téléphone, reached a speed of 1 m/s (3.6 km/h) going upstream at 2.5 m/s (9 km/h) downstream.

Gustave Trouvé’s tricycle, world’s first electric car.

Trouvé exhibited his boat (but not his tricycle) and his electro-medical instruments at the International Electrical Exhibition in Paris and soon after was awarded the Légion d'Honneur. He also miniaturized his electric motor to power a model airship, a dental drill, a sewing machine and a razor.

Led Zeppelin IV: The Identity of the Mysterious ‘Stick Man’ on the Album’s Cover Has Been Finally Been Revealed

For decades fans have speculated who the mysterious old man carrying sticks on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s fourth album might be. A West Country historian has finally uncovered the truth. The original of the photograph made famous by the band was recently discovered in a late Victorian photograph album. The discovery was made by Brian Edwards, a Visiting Research Fellow with the Regional History Centre at the University of the West of England, and is in the Museum collections.

Released on November 8, 1971, Led Zeppelin IV has sold more than 37 million copies worldwide. The album’s cover artwork was radically absent of any indication of the musicians or a title. The framed image, often been referred to as a painting, is understood to have been discovered by the band’s lead singer Robert Plant in an antique shop near guitarist Jimmy Page’s house in Pangbourne, Berkshire. Closer inspection reveals this framed image was a colored photograph, the whereabouts of which is now unknown.

“I used to spend a lot of time going to junk shops looking for things that other people might have missed,” Page said at the time. “Robert was on a search with me one time, and we went to this place in Reading where things were just piled up on one another. Robert found the picture of the old man with the sticks and suggested that we work it into our cover somehow. So we decided to contrast the modern skyscraper on the back with the old man with the sticks – you see the destruction of the old, and the new coming forward.”

Cover for the album Led Zeppelin IV by Led Zeppelin.

The black and white original Victorian photograph was discovered during ongoing research extending from the Ways of Seeing Wiltshire exhibition (May 20, 2021 to August 30, 2021), which was curated by Brian Edwards in partnership with Wiltshire Museum. From paintings to photographs and artefacts to memories, Edwards’ research involved monitoring everyday sources that stimulates public engagement with Wiltshire’s past. While following up on some early photographs of Stonehenge, Edwards came across the Victorian photograph Led Zeppelin made familiar over half a century ago.

Featuring exceptional photographs from Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset, the Victorian photograph album contained over 100 architectural views and street scenes together with a few portraits of rural workers. Most of the photographs are titled and beneath the photograph made famous by Led Zeppelin the photographer has written ‘A Wiltshire Thatcher.’ The Victorian photograph album is titled ‘Reminiscences of a visit to Shaftesbury. Whitsuntide 1892. A present to Auntie from Ernest.’

Brian Edwards said: “Led Zeppelin created the soundtrack that has accompanied me since my teenage years, so I really hope the discovery of this Victorian photograph pleases and entertains Robert, Jimmy, and John Paul.”

Gatefold cover of Led Zeppelin IV by Led Zeppelin.

“The first thing you notice is that as a photograph, it’s a really, really good photograph and also that the area of the tour being documented was quite a tight area geographically,” Edwards explained. “We had those clues, plus the name Ernest and as a bit of a stroke of luck I happened to remember that a lot of early photographers were also chemists. I only knew of one chemist in Wiltshire operating in the mid-century called Farmer, so I looked him up and he left Wilshire to start up a photography business in Brighton. He had three sons, one of whom was called Ernest. This Ernest not only went on to become a photographer but also a teacher of photography and became quite well known. Fortunately, I found his marriage certificate online and there were handwriting matches with the words in the photo album.”

A part signature matching the writing in the album suggests the photographer is Ernest Howard Farmer (1856–1944), the first head of the School of Photography at the then newly renamed Polytechnic Regent Street. Now part of the University of Westminster, Farmer had worked in the same building as the instructor of photography since 1882, when it was then known as the Polytechnic Young Men’s Christian Institute.

Further research suggests the thatcher captured in the image is Lot Long (sometimes Longyear), who was born in Mere in 1823 and died in 1893. At the time the photograph was taken, Lot was a widower living in a small cottage in Shaftesbury Road, Mere.

Lot Long, a Wiltshire thatcher in a 1892 photograph by Ernest Howard Farmer.

“I had a similar bit of luck with the character in the photograph,” Edwards continued. “There were only around 30 or 40 thatchers working in Wilshire in the 1890s and I could rule a lot of them out as they would have been in the north of the county or their age ruled them out, which only left me with three. Once I’d whittled them down, there was only one at that time in that specific area which was Lot Long. So, we think our friend on the cover of Led Zeppelin IV is Lot Long from Mere in Wiltshire.”

(via Wiltshire Museum)

40 Old Tintypes Show What People Wore in the Late Victorian Era

Victorian fashion consists of the various fashions and trends in British culture that emerged and developed in the United Kingdom and the British Empire throughout the Victorian era, roughly from the 1830s through the 1890s.

The period saw many changes in fashion, including changes in styles, fashion technology and the methods of distribution. Various movement in architecture, literature, and the decorative and visual arts as well as a changing perception of gender roles also influenced fashion.

Under Queen Victoria's reign, England enjoyed a period of growth along with technological advancement. Mass production of sewing machines in the 1850s as well as the advent of synthetic dyes introduced major changes in fashion. Clothing could be made more quickly and cheaply. Advancement in printing and proliferation of fashion magazines allowed the masses to participate in the evolving trends of high fashion, opening the market of mass consumption and advertising.

Take a look at these old tintypes to see what people really wore during the late Victorian era.

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